Money Supermarket Google Authority

What you’re seeing below is confirmation that Money Supermarket is still an “authority site” in Google (as of today), and as such, still appears at the top of Google for it’s trade mark term.

Note the extra links under the domain? That is the sign of an authority site for a particular key term.

What is an Authority site?

An “authority” site is one which Google values, typically a well known brand (like Money Supermarket) or leader in it’s industry, with a lot of quality links pointing to it from other websites. Google normally ranks this website no.1 and no.2 in it’s listings and provides extra linkage to the site from it’s search engine results listings (see Nike) in Google as a reward for it being trusted as one of the best websites on the web associated with a particular term.

It’s been reported recently that Money Supermarket could be in trouble with Google over “unethical” marketing practices in Google search engine results pages – ie unethical search engine optimisation. Mortgage Strategy sums it up pretty well in a recent article about Money Supermarket’s Google woes:

Whether or not Google’s planning or not to respond to these accusations with a ban or penalty, it certainly looks as though, unlike Ocean Finance, Money Supermarket, at the time of writing, is still regarded as an authority site by Google, and still able to rank at the top of the serps for it’s trademark term “Money Supermarket”.

And it may be just, as reported, that Google has turned the dial up or down on certain filters meaning Moneysupermarket.com has dropped down the serps through a natural ranking process.

NB – Being an authority site doesn’t mean you rank high for all terms associated with your industry (personal finance in this case) – just your “trademark” term. For example Money Supermarket might not be as performing as well as they used to for “loan” or “remortgage”. While any site can be an authority on a keyword phrase, it’s typically trademarked brands or well known organisations / market leaders that enjoy it (colleges or universities do well, too).

PS – This article is just a test to see if we can position this page directly below Money Supermarket’s free adverts in Google when searching for the term “Money Supermarket” to illustrate that Google results can be manipulated with ethical seo practices (ie ours) as well as unethical ones, and that it’s not all “guesswork” as in the article above – that depends on your seo company

It should also serve as an example of how being an authority site keeps other web pages (ie this one) from nicking your spot at the top of Google for your trademark term, as we managed to do to Ocean Finance last week, just by writing an article.

We should get the results of this seo test back in about 3-4 days….

Did you know when you link to a Hobo SEO post we have search engine friendly links back to your site if approved? Our comments are also search engine friendly you know (once you've commented on a few posts)! Do you need any more encouragement to get involved in the conversation ;)